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TV REVIEWS: FTN Reviews The Flash Season 6 Episode 7: The Last Temptation Of Barry Allen Part 1

November 27th, 2019 by Todd Black Comments

One of the most classic hero tropes is that of being accepting when death comes because you know it’s for the great good. Superman has done it, Batman has done it, Green Arrow is doing it right now, and Barry Allen has to do in very soon. But the trope always takes a twist near the end most times when they reach a breaking point in which they so desperately want to avoid their fate. “The Last Temptation Of Barry Allen Pt.1” beautifully showed that breaking point.

With Crisis (in the Flash timeline anyway) only 2 days (and now less) away, things are coming to a head. So when Ralph gets attacked by Ramsey and basically put on medical lockdown, Barry starts to have doubts about everything that’s going on. Whether all his plans to prep the city for what’s coming is enough.

That alone would’ve been a compelling storyline, but instead The Flash writers took it even farther by having Barry getting infected (unbeknownst to him at first) by Ramsey and having to fight the infection in order to be himself…yet like all temptations…it’s not that easy.

Bringing back the Speed Force, and then the visual of Ramsey (in his original form) was a nice way of showcasing the “Good Angel, Bad Angel” on Barry’s shoulders. And using Barry’s fear of Crisis, the pain of losing Nora, and the grief that he’s likely leaving Iris alone against him to try and get him to take Ramsey’s side was brilliantly done.

At any point this could’ve become very tropey and cheesy. And in fact I thought that he was getting his version of “Three Ghosts”, but thankfully it was much deeper than that. Having the corruption take Barry for a bit and basically having him relive the death of his mother via his own hands was a very creepy visual. This was full-on horror in some ways. Which is something The Flash rarely dives into.

The, at the end, you kind of knew that something was wrong even before Iris got there. It sounded like Barry, but it wasn’t him, and sure enough, he succumbed to his temptation. It won’t last, but the visual of the “Dark Flash” was really well played.

Another thing that I loved was getting to see Iris, Camilla and Allegra working together on their conspiracy story. This is clearly going to be the “Graphic Novel” for the back half of the season, so seeing them take steps towards it was really cool, as well as getting to show Iris as a reporter in full this go around.

In fact, the only real bad things about it was the layering of which they did things. Such as the literal one-and-done scene with Nash, Frost having a panic attack over almost losing Barry and Ralph and not even fleshing it out more, and then the very bad CGI fight between Ralph and Ramsey. I know they have a budget, and they did some things alright, but at certain shots (like the slow motion beginning) it was REALLY bad.

Still, “The Last Temptation Of Barry Allen Pt.1” was honestly my favorite episode of the season so far. And I look forward to seeing how it resolves itself.

Just remember…A Crisis Is Coming.

4.5 out of 5 nerds

Todd Black is reader of comics, a watch of TV (a LOT of TV), and a writer of many different mediums. He's written teleplays, fan-fictions, and currently writes a comic book called Guardians (guardians-comic.com). He dreams of working at Nintendo, writing a SHAZAM! TV series, and working on Guardians for a very long time!